HDD questions

I'm on win 7 Pro 32 bit, 2 IDE drives as master and slave, I have drive 0 is C: ( OS ),
Drive 1 is D: ( which is listed as a "Dynamic disc" with 2 partitions. 1 is a 4GB and the other is 114.9GB with BOTH being listed as D: ).
Question 1: I have a couple of older imaged IDE drives that were clones of my XP system before I went to win 7.
My thought was to reformat each of them to use just to back up my D drives on my 32 bit and 64 bit win 7 computers so I bought a USB 3.0
SATA/IDE HDD adapter ( bacward compatible with USB 2.0 ).
I hooked up the adapter and power to the IDE Disc ( jumper is on slave ) and plugged the USB into the win 7 x86 computer and it see's the
Drive as a mass storage "Media Drive" with no option to format it, just an option to change the drive letter.
It's not seen in "windows explorer", it's just seen in computer management/Disc management.
Why isn't it seen correctly and why can't I format it?
Question 2: To get rid of both partitions on the "Dynamic Disc" to make just one partition as storage, I assume I would have to move my saved files from that disc and delete a partition and reformat the whole thing, is that correct? Can I do that from disc management?
Thanks for any and all responses.

Let me try to get my mind around this...
You want to stick a few more (antiquated) hard drives in your system, but instead of using the IDE controller (because
They are already in use with other antiquated HDDs), you want the IDE drives connected to your far superior SATA ports via an inferior USB adaptor?

You realize that your superior SATA controllers are being taken up by two (gasp) CD/DVD ROM drives, while your hard drives are sitting on a much slower IDE.

As to question 2, I have attached a screenshot to show what I have now on my computer with the question on the photo.

Move the data over from the one you want to delete, then delete, once deleted just expand the other partition.
Why is that drive dynamic to begin with?

Last edited by CLiNT; 2014-03-23 at 23:34.

DRIVE IMAGINGInvest a little time and energy in a well thought out BACKUP regimen and you will have minimal down time, and headache.

Let me try to get my mind around this...
You want to stick a few more (antiquated) hard drives in your system, but instead of using the IDE controller (because
They are already in use with other antiquated HDDs), you want the IDE drives connected to your far superior SATA ports via an inferior USB adaptor?

You realize that your superior SATA controllers are being taken up by two (gasp) CD/DVD ROM drives, while your hard drives are sitting on a much slower IDE.

Not exactly, the old promise controller doesn't have a driver for win 7 so I just stayed with the original IDE HDD's ( as master & slave )that had my XP system on it. Here was a previous question I asked concerning this older computer that may tell you more about the configuration: http://windowssecrets.com/forums/sho...n-7-question-2

All drives are IDE.
When the computer had XP for an OS, I used cloning software to clone another drive for a replaceable HDD in case of problems. Since I am not using this particular HDD anymore, I thought that maybe I could format it and just use it to copy and paste a backup of all the files I have saved to storage drive D on win 7 ( instead of using a bunch of DVD's ).
So I bought a USB 3.0 SATA/IDE adapter ( external ) that I just plug in the old IDE HDD to and plug the USB into a USB port on the computer. In Disk Manager it see's that there is a drive attached but there is no option to format it, just change drive letter assignment. It's not seen at all in windows explorer.

Move the data over from the one you want to delete, then delete, once deleted just expand the other partition.
Why is that drive dynamic to begin with?]

When my computer was XP, the swap file was a 4GB partition on drive D and the rest was for storage. For win 7, I wanted to get rid of that 4 GB partition and have just 1 partition for storage on drive D. I deleted the 4 GB partition and extended the remaining partition and clicked to format and the option it gave me was for a Dynamiic Disk so that's what I did. But now ( for some reason ) that 4 GB partition is back.
As you can see, I'm far from being an expert on partitioning.

As both partitions are listed as D: how you you know which is which?
Have you mounted one of the partitions as a directory on the other partition - mount point? If this is the case you can just copy everything off to another disk and re-partition the original disk as a single D: drive, dynamic or simple.

The Following User Says Thank You to Paul T For This Useful Post:

As both partitions are listed as D: how you you know which is which?
Have you mounted one of the partitions as a directory on the other partition - mount point? If this is the case you can just copy everything off to another disk and re-partition the original disk as a single D: drive, dynamic or simple.

cheers, Paul

Good point, I don't have a clue as to how they both ended up with the same drive letter. Maybe I should just try to extend the larger of the 2?? Somehow that 4 GB partition is still attached to that drive instead of being deleted as I explained in my previous post but now it is included as D:
When I originally deleted that partition ( which was then P: ), and extended D:, it looked like one continuous drive with no partitions.

Basically it means more than one partition can be a constituent of one volume, including more than one drive. A drive being in a dynamic configuration makes it eligible to join a spanned volume. In general, spanned volumes and dynamic disks are to be avoided since a failure in any one constituent; well, there goes the whole lot so to speak as far as potential data loss goes.

Basically it means more than one partition can be a constituent of one volume, including more than one drive. A drive being in a dynamic configuration makes it eligible to join a spanned volume. In general, spanned volumes and dynamic disks are to be avoided since a failure in any one constituent; well, there goes the whole lot so to speak as far as potential data loss goes.

Thanks for the info. If I move all the data from the drive, can I just reformat from windows explorer or do I need to do it from Disk Manager, or do I need to use a partitioning tool?

I'm in the process of copy and paste to my other computer right now so will try your method after this all finishes. Gonna take awhile.
Once I get this problem solved I still have the problem in question 1.